My baseball calendar informs me that on this day in 1988, the Red Sox traded two of their minor leaguers for pitcher Mike Boddicker. Boddicker was no slouch, going 7-3, 15-11 and 17-8 in his two and one half seasons with the Sox. The players they gave up? Three time All-Star utility outfielder Brady Anderson and four time All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling.

I believe also that Curt Schilling is the active major leaguer with the most at bats without getting a home run.

Last night my loving wife took me to watch the A’s take on the Mariners. While the Mariners’ star has seemed to have faded, I still love to watch Ichiro bat. Not enough to see them beat the A’s mind you, but he’s always trouble on the bases. It seemed only fitting that he would have the last at bat, but Dotel got him, striking out the side in the top of the 9th inning to get the save.

Both Crosby and Chavez had home runs. Crosby continues to impress. I was a huge fan of Tejada, but I must say that Crosby is doing a terrific job, and is well deserving of the Rookie of the Year.

I took quite a few pictures, the one on the right being actually cropped out of this one.

I was tearing off sheets for my daily calendar which lists achivements in baseball, when I encountered the following:

July 19, 1911 Walter Carlisle makes an unassisted triple play for Vernon of the Pacific Coast League. What’s so unusual about that? Carlisle is playing center field at the time.

Blink blink. Here’s some additional information. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the major leagues, so you won’t find it on Baseball Almanac’s page of unassisted triple plays.

Carlisle also apparently played for the 1908 Red Sox, but recorded only 10 AB with 1 hit, 1 walk for a career average of 0.100 in the major leagues.

Bukiet and Harold wrote a paper entitled A Markov Chain Approach To Baseball, which details their use of Markov models to study hitting order and the effect of trades in baseball. Yang and Swartz wrote a paper entitled A Two-Stage Bayesian Model for Predicting Winners of Major League Games uses a much smaller set of data to perform similar calculations. Alan Schwartz of ESPN wrote about why Barry Bonds 2002 season was statistically without equal, according to Carl Morris of Harvard. You could also visit another webpage which deals with the question “How long should a World Series last?

On this date in 1990, the New York Yankees were playing against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park. The Yankees pitcher Andy Hawkins gave up no hits, and ended up losing the game and never being credited for the no-hitter.

In the eight inning, the Yankees gave up four unearned runs on three errors and two walks. The White Sox didn’t have to bat in the bottom of the ninth, since they were in the lead, and a commitee decided a year later that since Hawkins didn’t pitch a full nine innings, he did not warrant a no-hitter.

Baseball is a kooky, kooky game. You can look at the boxscore and play by play from retrosheet for more details.

Taking a cue from Tom Mangan, I decided to participate in his proposed Blog Me Out to the Ballgame 2004 extravaganza. Carmen and I got some cheap view level tickets, and were treated to a beautiful day at the ballpark, baking in the sun amidst the wide variety of individuals who form that eclectic group known as baseball fans.

My wife decided to blog the game using her Sidekick, I shot some pictures (still to be downloaded mostly) but also shot this small video of the couple sitting directly in front of us. Literally the guy never stopped talking the entire game, chattering “let’s go a’s, good batter, good batter, let’s go a’s” into a little plastic megaphone. Both him and his partner also took to holding up a little stuffed moose in an A’s uniform, and a little poster. This was slightly less amusing, as he frequently obscured my view of homeplate, as you can see in video.

The amazing thing was he seemed completely oblivious to any nuance of the game, jammering on and on and on no matter what the circumstance to no one in particular. When someone would reach base, I swear he acted like a bobble head, jammering on to the people to he left, to the right, to the left to the right, on and on and on. Weird stuff.

Redmond looked shakey, perhaps the 3 days rest was simply insufficient. Bonds hammered one deep to right field, I can’t remember seeing on that deep all last season. Still he didn’t bash a window out like Tejada did in interleague play three years ago when the A’s crushed the Giants. I didn’t get a picture of him swinging, but I did get a nice one of him jogging from 2nd to 3rd.

The Giants also scored a runner from 3rd on a bunt, and pulled off some good hit and runs. The A’s didn’t make too many errors, but neither did they show much signs of any brilliance either in the hitting or fielding department. They were simply outplayed.

Final score: Giants 5, A’s 2, Mark, mild sunburn and over fed with hot dogs.

In other words, a blast.

After the Athletics previous road trip, I felt I had plenty to be worried about. The A’s hitting (especially their ability to hit with men in scoring position) was so anemic that I felt that even if Hudson, Mulder and Zito turned in good performances, the A’s could still pull out a defeat by simply failing to score those who got on base.

Ah, what a difference a couple of weeks can make in this crazy game called baseball.

Last night, I witnessed what can only be described as a meltdown. I’d been hearing alot about the Reds and their unexpected position atop the NL Central leader board. Griffey came into town with 498 homeruns, and since I had tickets for game 3, I felt like there was a remote possibility that I could see some small bit of baseball history. What I got was meltdown of incredible proportion.

In the three game series, Oakland outscored the Reds 40 to 16. The Reds starting pitching for the three games had a combined ERA of 18.9. Last nights game was a phenomenal ass-whooping, where Acevedo seemed literally to be defenseless on the mound as a veritable cavalcade of A’s reached base again and again. Brief worried gasps where heard when Cincinatti scored 5 times in the sixth and three more times in the 7th against Harden and Ducsherer respectively, but the A’s bats weren’t finished, and they scored another six runs in the 7th to put the game beyond any reasonable doubt.

I’m not sure what got Cincinatti to the top of their division, but they better order a refill.

Best part of the game: Damian Miller’s grand slam to make it 8-0, and Eric Byrnes pinch running appearance, where he immediately steals second (a perfect 9 for 9 on the year) and then scores on a base hit. Here’s the game recap.

Okay, okay. I’m still on the baseball kick. Sorry for all of you who are bored with this topic, but I couldn’t help myself: metafilter had a link to a guide to keeping score in baseball. Until I started attending baseball games and sitting in good seats, I never saw anybody do this, but I must admit, I’m kind of fascinated by the idea. I’ve started to see baseball as an arcing story line: with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and keeping accurate score of the events helps you understand the story of a game. In the end, understanding the game makes it more enjoyable.

Of course, I may just sit down and munch hot dogs and enjoy the sunshine. That is good too.

I was watching the Oakland A’s game against the Chicago White Sox in preparation for sneaking out of work for today’s day game ($2 tickets? How can you resist?) and was treated to “bonus baseball”: a twelve inning game in which the role of hero was played by Bobby Kielty, who hit his first career walk off home run to win in the bottom of the 12th.

Unfortunately, Chavez was drilled in the right hand by Sox reliever Damaso Marte, and was forced to leave the game. Later X-rays revealed a break in his right hand, which may require a steel pin to be inserted. Oakland Athletics News reports that he’s expected to spend at least three weeks on the disabled list.

Ouch! Best wishes Eric, get well soon!

Addendum: I’m wearing my (somewhat unlucky, if truth be known) A’s baseball jersey today for the game. Last season it was actually getting unreasonably tight, and now it is actually baggy. Losing weight rocks. 🙂

Addendum to the Addendum: The A’s tied it up in the bottom of the 9th courtesy of a pinch hit double by Scott Hatteberg, and went on to win in the 10th when Mark Kotsay hit a walk off home run. Beleaguered reliever Arthur Rhodes gave two innings with none scored, although managed to load the bases in the 9th for an anxious moment for the fans of the green and gold.

Amazing what you can find when you dig. On retrosheet.org you can find box scores for lots of games. Pretty cool. For instance, I dug up the box score from an interesting game I attended.

The date was Sept 5, 2001. I was anxious to go to this Wednesday game because this would be the final appearance of Cal Ripken Jr. at the Oakland Coliseum. Cal would go 0 for 4 that day, but that’s not why I remember the game. The A’s would win 12-6, but that’s also not what I remember. Continue reading →